Wednesday, May 5, 2010

An effort to find out Angling spots in Delhi & NCR

Angling is the 2nd of my most preferable thing to do during holidays, the 1st one is of course cooking, the most favorite pass time of mine. Though NCR, Delhi seems not like an ideal spot for fishing (thanks to the contribution from all of us, which probably includes me as well to kill Yamuna….which now shows her existence only with dirty chemically populated water….), but still I was hopeful and thought probably here and there may be some lake is present which is hidden from common usage/knowledge.

I had 3 continues holidays to cover (including 1st Jan, Saturday and Sunday) and wanted to find out some lake within 50KM radius from my place (Noida). This would let me to reach the place riding my bike and come back by the evening without the need to stay over night.

Well, as obvious I did a bit Google and found out some scattered information. I guess we need some revamp in this sector (Travel/Treking in India), we need some more helpful web sites, blogs and forums. After spending a while came across to a link which seemed like pointing me to some shining side (but it’s actually not so, I’ll explain latter…).

Above link suggests 3 places in NCR, SurajKund, Badkhal and Okhla Barrage. Out of the 3, Okhla Barrage is the nearest from my home and I have seen the place multiple times (never gathered the courage to go inside which carries dirty and black water, moreover it looks boring from the out side. So it was strictly No No…)

So I thought probably BadkhalLake and SurajKund probably will be the places to visit and was very optimistic as both the places are within 40 KMs, ideal for my criteria.

It is 2nd Jan, 2010 we are already into the new year (after a damn cool celebration to say bye to a great year 2009). Me and my roomy Manish started at around 11 AM (we thought to start a bit earlier but, it was the coldest morning of the winter season and full of fog, so we waited to make sure we at least see some light and don’t hit anyone on our way….) Manish started the bike and with bundle of hopes within our heart we started journey. It was damn chilly morning, but as I told you we were excited and pretty enthusiast about a spot where we can do angling in NCR, hu huuuu….

It took us around 1 hr to find out Badkhal lake, after a decent traffic on our way. But what we just hearfrom the security guard of BadkhalLake, “THERE IS NO WATER IN THE LAKE!!” What the fuck is this, we didn’t care about the damn chilly cold morning and travelled all the way (around 40 KM) and what we find is the Lake has dried up 5 years back and there is only little bit water in the lake during monsoon. It’s really heart breaking, b’coz the posters over there still shows options for boating, angling, but there is no water anymore!! Poor “Phuchka Wala” shared with us his sad story that one time back the place used filled up with decent crowd and their business was also running good.

I guess people need to take care of the nature to expect the same from Nature too…..

Both me and Manish were speechless, sit for sometime and watched the dried up lake, where local children are now playing cricket!!

There was not much to spend time for, so we started to head back. Surajkund was on the way, so we thought to give a try that too, though we started to become sceptical. We were not wrong after travelling around 10 KMs we reached SurajKund and guess what we found, Yes, it’s the same!! There is no water in the lake anymore!!

We were tiered and failing to find out the lake was making the chilly winds more difficult for us, more add on to that there was huge traffic as maximum portion of the highway was under construction for up coming metro rail…..

Anyway we reached home safe, but there was an empty vacuum and pain for our failing attempt to find out a decent spot for angling…

Well I’m still hopeful as there are few more places in Haryana like Dumduma Lake, probably that will not disappoint us….I’ll update you guys once me & Manish decide to go over there!!